She doesn’t want the cats getting shot? What about us? Get them in a crossfire and kill them? In cold blood?
I stand for a time and then find my legs and start moving in the direction she pointed. Wait five minutes, Matt said. How long did I stand, paralyzed by the thought of it all? Time has no meaning when fear is running up and down your spine.
The land rises and I keep looking for the outcropping of rocks, expecting to come face-to-face with the second dog any second. How do the sabre-toothed cats know the good guys from the bad guys? I look behind me. There is nothing sneaking up on me—cat nor dog. The rocks appear and I ease around them. Sure enough, there is a glow from a fire, but not the fire itself.
Then, at the bottom of a slope in front of me is a man, and it is not Matt. With his goggles and limited peripheral vision, he does not see me. Instead of bringing up my weapon and shooting him like I was ordered, I stumble back. Gravity and wet grass and mud pull my legs out from under me and I land flat on my back. I commence an uncontrolled slide and come to a stop at the base of a tree, twenty feet directly in front of the guy.
“What the fuck?” he says. “I just got off the radio with you. You said you was entering a cave or something. You fuck’n lost, Sammy?”
I’m the first to understand the picture. He thinks I am somebody else. By the time he says his buddy’s name, I’m on my knees trying to make sense out of the MP5 and get it pointed in the right general direction. Then it’s his turn to come to an understanding.
“You’re not Sammy! What the fuck?”
By this time I have my weapon trained on him and I’m pulling the trigger. It’s in that deadly second that I become sickened with the awareness that the safety is still on, and that I have no memory of where the hell it is to take it off. Instead of jumping to my feet and trying to dive away, I freeze and wait for my death. Maybe I know that there is no way of hiding or running, that his bullets will find me no matter what.
And death does come, swiftly and efficiently. Before he is able to bring his weapon to bear, and pull his own trigger, he disappears in a flash of sabre-tooth fury, the sounds of his death masked by the drum of the pounding rain. I fall to the ground and roll onto my back, take deep breaths and let the rain beat upon my face. It is a solid rain now, not a drizzle. I lie until I start into a shaking chill again and then struggle to my feet. The cat and the bad guy are gone. I step up to the spot where I last saw them and look down at the MP5 left behind. I should pick it up and take it with me, but the burden of one is quite enough. I think about his words when he thought I was his killing buddy. “You said you was entering a cave or something.” That means the others are not camped where Sam said they were, or they started out early. They are just now entering the mountain, less than thirty minutes from my wife and daughter.
I turn in the direction of the waterfall and the entrance into the mountain, calculating how long it’ll take me to get back there, when my attention is captured by a terrifying sound amongst the patter of rain. I turn back around to face the snarling white teeth of a cross between a chow, a pit bull, and some kind of hairy monster. Once again my life flashes before me. What are the odds of being saved a second time by a sabre-toothed cat. I slowly bring the weapon up and start feeling around for the safety. I know that my frantic fingers are useless, but I can’t get control of them, and I don’t want to take my eye off of him. He steps forward and I carefully step back. Any sudden motion could be considered an aggressive action which would trigger his own aggressive action and it would all be over, except for my screaming.
I turn the gun around and get a bat-like grip on the barrel then into a batter’s stance, ready to punch the animal over yonder trees. I kick the other MP5 out of my way, and brace.
“Come on you little bastard,” I say through my chattering teeth.
As though he understands the challenge, he charges. He leaves the ground and I take the swing. The weapon is not heavy enough against the muscle of the animal and I do nothing more than destroy it, and knock him from his line of trajectory. Instead of my throat, he sinks his teeth into my left bicep and knocks me onto my butt. He rolls into the bushes. I struggle to my knees and turn toward him, gritting against the raging pain. My arm dangles at my side, blood drips from my fingertips. I flex the fingers and wave the broken gun around with my other hand, trying to be as threatening as I can. But I’m damaged, and he knows it. He circles me slowly, knowing I’ll eventually pass out from blood loss. He shakes his head. Maybe he’s damaged, too.
I sit back. My bloody hand brushes the frame of the other MP5; a fresh weapon if I can manipulate it. The animal shakes his head again. There is no time to think it through. I hook my fingers around the barrel and push to my feet, still waving the broken weapon over my head. Suddenly his posture changes. It’s a movement I might expect from a coiled snake just before its deadly strike. I make my own coil and throw the broken weapon at him just as he starts to spring. It strikes him on the nose, and knocks him off balance. I reach down and pull up the good MP5, but my fumbling fingers take too long to find the grip and the trigger, and he is coming at me.
I throw a block. Instead of my throat he gets the rhino horn and rips the goggles from my head. He falls away and I am left with about two seconds to find the trigger, pray that the safety is off, and then find the killer canine. The last is the greater challenge since I am now blind. He gives me more than two seconds. I run my finger over the trigger, I drop to my knees, down to his level, hold my breath and listen.
There is a rustle. I turn my head and listen again. Another rustle. I point at it, brace the weapon against my ribs, and pull the trigger. Eight or ten exploding rounds twist me around and knock me over backwards, the last couple tearing through the tree tops. There is an echo and I realize it is actually another weapon going off not far away. I’ve no time to concern myself with whether it’s Matt shooting or being shot at. There is still a vicious dog after my ass because I can hear him breathing and moving. Suddenly, a thought strikes me. It’s very brief, but surprising nonetheless. The thought is that I have felt none of this coming. I have had no feelings of approaching death; mine or anyone else’s. A low, gurgling growl shuts down that thought.
I must have hit him at least once. I can’t imagine he’d be making this much noise if he was fully intact. I get back on one knee and turn toward him, or where I think he is. There is a rapid motion sound twenty degrees to my left. As I swing the weapon around I pull the trigger again. The recoil and the animal throw me flat onto my back, and all I can think off in the next few seconds is the warm blood covering my face and filling my mouth, running in my eyes, my ears, and the fact that he has my throat.
Please, God! Save Tanya and Becky!
Reba
At 5:35 I go up to the entrance to look out and see if daylight’s approaching. Simon is still lying where we left him, guarding the entrance against Mom’s escape. He watches my approach but doesn’t seem to be bothered by the fact that I start on by. He’s accepted me as one of his group. I consider stopping and giving him a pat. Good Simon, I say instead.
Although it is dark, and raining like all get out, I get the impression that daybreak is beginning. It seems like I can see the silhouette of the top of trees. I start to turn away but then hear gunfire. It’s hard to tell for sure over the waterfall and rain. There it is again, and then again.
It stops.
I wait and listen, there is no more. After a while I began to doubt if I heard it at all. I reach my mind out to find someone, or something. There is nothing but Simon lying behind me, not even feelings or visions of death. I can definitely see the treetops now, black against the lightening sky. The rain is slacking.
I return to where Mom is. “Daybreak is starting,” I say.
“How much time you think we have?” she says without opening her eyes.
I consider the distance from where we left the ATV and then the distance from the back entrance to where we are. “An hour, maybe two or mo
re if they’re slow risers.”
“Why would they even have bothered to stop if they have those night vision things? They could be sneaking up on us right now.”
I consider that, decide that even professional killers need their sleep and would probably rather do their trekking through the woods in the daylight if they can.
Sleep! I could sure use some of that right now, even just a thirty minute nap. But if I’m going to be dead in a few hours, what difference would it make? No need getting rest before I die. But then, if I’m asleep when they come maybe they’ll just kill me and I won’t feel the pain nor see death coming. I’d die in my sleep.
I’d rather go down fighting. Maybe take one of them with me.
Still, a nap sure sounds good. But I know I couldn’t sleep even if I tried. I situate another blanket, look at Mom’s watch and then lie down next to her. She is snoring.
5:47.
At 6:15 we need to be alert, and ready.
Chapter 61
Reba
I’m standing in a field, but I can’t move. There’s a big sabre-toothed cat twenty yards away and he’s saying something I can’t understand. The words are garbled, if they’re words at all? It could be only a growl. We sit in a sea of long grass and stare at each other. I try to take a step but my feet are tangled, rooted in place by the grass.
And then there is another cat, next to me. He is so big I can look him directly in the eyes, both of which seem bigger than my open hand. He nudges my shoulder with his huge flat nose and says in my ear, “Reba.”
“What?” I say.
“Shhh! Wakeup!” His paw covers my mouth and . . .
. . . I wakeup.
“Shhh!” Mom says. She takes her hand off my mouth. “I heard something.”
I try to snap my mind to full alert, something I can normally do when I want to, but it’s like someone poured a thick goo into my brain. I listen but hear nothing accept the hum of the waterfall.
“What?” I whisper.
“A voice, I think.”
I roll to my hands and knees and crawl over to the bag of dynamite. Mom comes along with me. We hunker down behind the rock wall retainer that defines the fireplace. We are hidden from view from both entrances. “What time is it?” I pull out a stick of dynamite, angry with myself for giving in to sleep. How many hours was I out?
Mom takes her eyes off the explosive in my one hand and the match in the other, and holds up her arm to catch the light. “6:10.”
6:10! “They’re early!”
The seconds tick by and there’s nothing. “You sure it was a voice?”
“I’m not sure of anything.”
“Were you awake?”
“I think so.”
I think to ask the obvious, you don’t know if you were asleep? I don’t. Instead, I release the tension and slump against the wall. After a bit I put the dynamite stick back in the bag, and return the matchstick to my pocket with its container. I then resurrect the train of thought I had before falling asleep. “We’ve got three options,” I say to Mom, still keeping my voice at a whisper. “We can stay here in the light of the torches and fire where we’re sitting ducks; we can find a couple of places where we wouldn’t be so visible and from where we can throw the dynamite; or we can go after them.”
“What do you mean, ‘go after them?’”
“The best defense is an offense, especially when the opponent isn’t expecting it.”
“Well this opponent has those night vision things and we have a lantern. How the hell are we suppose to sneak up on them?”
I don’t say anything because I have no idea.
“I’m also not so sure I want to be throwing dynamite where I might bring the entire mountain down upon us.”
I hadn’t thought of that. “Option two then.”
“My concern still applies.”
“I don’t think it’s as risky. It’s either that or we die.”
“Shit!” she says and drops her head into her hands.
Suddenly there’s a cough. We look at each other and then in an instant I have the dynamite and match in my hand again. We sit quietly and listen. “Where do you think they are?” I whisper.
“I’m not sure,” she whispers back. “Maybe up there.”
That’s what I thought, too. Makes no sense, though. That’s toward the front entrance, where Simon is lying. I look over the wall. I can only see the soft glow where daylight filters in. There’s no way he’d let someone get by. But he is old, and injured. Maybe he was asleep when they came upon him and they shot him with a gun that had one of those silencers. Maybe that’s what we just heard, the cough of a silenced gun, not the cough of a man.
I crouch back down. Mom holds the dynamite out away from her body as if she would be safer should it go off all by itself. I peek over the top again and look up at the glow of the entrance, then follow the path down into the dark end of the cavern. “I don’t see anything.”
Mom looks and slumps back down. “Me neither.”
“Shit to hell! What are we going to do?”
Mom looks again. “There’s someone!” She starts to panic, trying to strike her match on a rock.
I grab her arm. “No! Wait!”
She looks at me as though I’m crazy. Suddenly her face changes and she says, “Yeah. You’re right. I probably can’t throw that far.”
Suddenly I’m sorry I handed her a stick of dynamite. I’ve seen her throw. I’d say she throws like a girl, except it’s worse than that. She could hit herself in the head with it. I look and see the silhouette of a man, a bare silhouette of half his body and one of the MP5 guns in his hand. The glimpse is brief as he starts down the path, stepping into the unlit area. I hunker back down with Mom. “Okay. I can throw that far but let's wait until he’s farther away from the entrance. We don’t want to take the chance of starting an avalanche of rocks that traps us in here.”
“That was my concern,” she says.
I think about the fact that this means that Dad, Matt, and Sam and her cats failed. At least one of Vandermill’s men got through, which also means that Dad is probably dead. I try to expel that thought from my head, try to convince myself that that might not be the case, that this one guy just slipped by them. What about the gun fire I heard?
I take a deep breath, push back a tear and look over the wall again. It is so hard to see in that part of the cavern, especially with one torch right in my face. Then there is motion, like a shadow passing in the reaches of darkness. He’s at the corner, turning toward us. “Light the match,” I say to Mom, holding the dynamite out for her.
She does nothing. Her eyes have suddenly gone huge with fear. A minute ago she was ready to light and throw one herself. Now she’s petrified. “Mom!” Her eyes turn toward me. “Light the match.”
She nods, looks at the little wooden stick in her hand, and then draws it across one of the rocks on the wall. Instead of flaring up, it breaks in half.
Shit! I look but it takes a few seconds to see him again. He is moving very slow, now on the very edge of the reach of light. I switch hands between the match and dynamite that I’m holding, and quickly draw the match head across a rock. Nothing happens. Then I remember that Dad always used something on the bottom of the container. I hand the dynamite to Mom, pull the container out of my pocket, and strike the match. It flares to fire. I look again, see he is even closer, take the dynamite, and then apply the match to the end of the fuse. Like a Fourth of July sparkler, the fuse comes to life. I drop the match, switch the stick to my right hand and then . . .
. . . it hits me—a sudden pressure in my chest and the vision of the explosion right at his feet and the man thrown in the air and landing in a heap, one leg gone from the knee down, a face of blood and mangled skin. I gulp back the image, stuff the thought that I am about to kill someone, and rise to a standing position for a better throw.
And then the vision shows the eyes. Though the mouth and nose are hard to see in my little psychic pi
cture, the eyes are undamaged, unmistakable. The eyes which for some reason, to me, and which no one else ever agreed, never seemed to match, are my father’s.
“Holy shit to hell!” I look at the dynamite and instantly calculate four seconds left. GET RID OF IT! GET RID OF IT! I grab the fuse to pull it out but it is stubborn and my hand jerks away as the fuse burns my finger. I turn and look toward the hot springs chamber, throw the dynamite with everything I’ve got, and then grab Mom and pull her to the ground.
Chapter 62
Zach
The sight of the sabre-toothed cat brings me up short. I stagger back and against a boulder and focus on not sliding to the ground. I’m coherent enough to know that lying down may be the last thing I ever do. I recognize the cat and try to say, “Hi, Simon.” I cough instead. I can’t allow a rest. I push from the boulder, cough again, wait until the fuzz around my eyes eases, and my balance steadies and then start past the big cat. He watches me with little apparent concern.
When I get to where I can look down into the floor of the cavern, there is only the sleeping bag and blankets. The fire is low and one of the torches has gone out. Tanya and Becky are nowhere. I try to call out but get only a grunt. That starts me coughing and the pain to flare. My shoulder hurts like hell and is still bleeding, but I’ve gotten some of the use of my left arm back. The worst, though, is my neck. The dog missed my jugular but he sank enough of his sharp little teeth into me to damage my windpipe and my vocal cords. The bullets from my weapon opened him like a water pump and I nearly drowned on a combination of his blood and mine. I managed to struggle out from under him and spent the next couple of minutes spitting out blood, and trying to force oxygen into my lungs.
I had no more time than that. The fellow assassin this guy thought he was just talking to was entering a cave. He’s following our trail into the mountain.
I scan the cavern again. Maybe they’re hiding. The assassins couldn’t have gotten here yet, or Simon wouldn’t be casually lying around. There is only darkness on the other side where they will appear, and I didn’t bother picking my night-vision goggles back up after the fight with the dog, not thinking I’d need them.
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